What Happens If Détente with North Korea Fails? If détente fails, then the Overton window of policy options on North Korea will shift noticeably to the right, and North Korean 2018-2020 recalcitrance will be the justification.
by Robert E. Kelly
December 6, 2019 In the last few days, President Donald Trump returned to calling North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong Un ‘rocket man.’ Kim’s government returned the favor by dredging up its curious usage from two years ago, calling Trump once again a ‘dotard’ (an elderly person in their late-life dotage).
The language is humorous but portends a possible break in the peace process begun between the two men in early 2018. North Korea hawks have long suspected that the ideological and strategic gaps were too wide to bridge simply through summit diplomacy. Trump’s insistence that Kim was his friend always felt facile. The government of South Korean President Moon Jae-In similarly tried a ‘charm offensive.’ Moon has relentlessly promoted the idea that Kim is a different kind of North Korean leader, one open to bargains, deals, and better inter-Korean relations. Between Moon and Trump, they have met six times with Kim in two years. For a brief moment, dovish interpretations that a rapprochement with North Korea could be achieved by a leadership willing to breakthrough obsolete bureaucratic and ideological rigidities seemed possible.
Two years on though, this increasingly seems unlikely. Neither side has been willing to make serious concessions. North Korea wants the rollback of the tough multilateral sanctions imposed on it by the United Nations. But the only concession it offered was to close its aging nuclear facility at Yongbyon. Its nuclear program is so much greater than that now, that this is not nearly enough.
The Americans similarly offered very little. Trump’s government has repeatedly insisted on ‘complete, verifiable, irreversible disarmament.’ This was always fantastical thinking, made worse by the fact that Trump never offered anything remotely commensurate from the American side for such a huge North Korean concession. Throughout the process, I and other analysts suggested cumulative, small deals in the place of Trump and Moon’s insistence on a one-shot, big-bang deal to change everything at a stroke. Baby-step deals were never tried, and now détente looks shakier than ever. If North Korea follows through on its ‘Christmas gift’ threat and launches a missile (my guess), relations will likely slide back to the old status quo of containment, deterrence, sanction, and isolation.
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https://nationalinterest.org/blog/korea-watch/what-happens-if-d%C3%A9tente-north-korea-fails-102627
